Joseph Belbruno Blog

  BLACK MARK ‼️  Star Scholar Jason Arday Resigns From Cambridge Jason Arday Credit... Graeme Robertson/Guardian and eyevine, via Redux Aug. 5, 2026 Jason Arday, the University of Cambridge professor at the center of a deepening controversy around his academic qualifications , resigned on Wednesday from the same institution that in 2023 celebrated him as the youngest Black professor in its history. “I no longer wish to feel as though I am living under a constant spotlight, where every aspect of my life is subject to public examination and judgement,” Arday wrote in a statement. His resignation came hours after Cambridge announced an investigation into Arday, and six days before the scheduled release of his memoir “Great and Unfortunate Things,” by the Simon & Schuster imprint 37 Ink, in the United States. A representative of Simon & Schuster, which has so far stood by the book, told The New York Times on Wednesday that the publisher had no comment beyond the statement ...

  Scott Bessent’s Yen Trade Has Unintended Consequences for the Markets The way it’s being done should make us worry that the Fed is being roped into easing monetary conditions when it should be moving to tighten them By U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Kylie Cooper/Reuters The joint U.S.- Japan support of the yen is unusual . The way it is being financed is unprecedented, and adds liquidity when the punch bowl of the U.S. economy and markets is already overflowing. Put simply: America is printing dollars so Japan can buy yen. It isn’t quite quantitative easing, because the Federal Reserve is lending Japan money in return for temporary ownership of Treasurys in repurchase agreements, rather than outright buying the Treasurys. But like QE it expands the Fed balance sheet and pumps billions of dollars into the economy. So far the scale is small, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wants the Fed to drop its $60 billion cap on the emergency facility being used—or abused, given...

  Europe and the eternal north-south rift Financial Times Europe6 Aug 2026Janan Ganesh janan.ganesh@ft.com Last week end, when the Span ish prime min is ter called some other European states“selfish”, even allies must have winced. This is not because Pedro Sánchez waswithout a case. Gov ern ments were pro pos ing to (lit er ally) isol ate Spain after a surgeof migrants into Ceuta. Some had got their facts wrong. It is just that many see himas a stick ler for the national interest him self. He has rejec ted Nato’s ambi tion tospend 5 per cent of GDP on defence, as Rus sia would not be “bring ing its troopsacross the Pyren ees”. Nations on the other side of those moun tains found that linewant ing in solid ar ity. North ern and south ern Europe inhabit increas ingly dif fer ent men tal worlds. Thecon sum ing focus of the north is Rus sia. Unless Vladi mir Putin mel lows in theautumn of his life, this will not change soon. The south, which has less expos ure tothat prob lem, can cite o...

  SpaceX shows why quarterly earnings may be nebulous Financial Times Europe6 Aug 2026 It is always a happy occa sion when a newly lis ted com pany reports its quarterlyearn ings for the first time, and they beat ana lysts’ expect a tions. SpaceX did that onTues day. But if ever there were a case to be made that quarterly fin an cial state -ments are point less — a view pro posed by the US mar ket reg u lator — Elon Musk’srocket maker surely strengthens it. SpaceX did bet ter than ana lysts expec ted on most of the import ant meas ure ments.Rev enue increased by 92 per cent year on year; losses nar rowed, mostly because ofits profi t able satel lite com mu nic a tions busi ness, Starlink. This is some what facesav ing for Musk, after the 44 per cent fall in SpaceX shares from their peak in June. What has happened to SpaceX’s fin ances over the past three months is, though,pretty much irrel ev ant. Its long-term goals, after all, include col on ising Mars, aster -oid min ing and build i...

  Europe must do more to harness its AI ambitions Financial Times Europe6 Aug 2026The writer is a fel low at Stan ford Uni versity’s Insti tute for Human Centered Arti fi cial Intel li gence and author of ‘The Tech Coup’Mari etje Schaake European Coun cil pres id ent António Costa is schedul ing a dis cus sion amongEuropean heads of state about AI this autumn. Bet ter late than never. Lead ers mustuse this oppor tun ity to catch up and align on AI policy. While the US and China treatthe tech no logy as a key pri or ity and instru ment of state power, the EU has not evendecided on a col lect ive polit ical course. Today, any dis cus sion of digital sov er eignty or stra tegic autonomy is, in effect, a dis -cus sion about AI. This global gamble cre ates a risk for Europe. Without sov er eign AIoptions, Europeans are depend ent on for eign plat forms and tools. These depend en -cies go bey ond com mer cial decisions. They mean that decisions made by for eigngov ern ments have a dis pro...

John Bolton: Trump’s tit-for-tat with Iran ignores the larger reality Saturday’s swerve showed that White House “strategy” on Iran had all but evaporated. Just last week, responding to Iranian strikes on U.S. bases in Jordan, Trump said , “We’re going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn to hit them.” This is not strategy; it barely qualifies as tactics. While the U.S. flounders, some observers are scaremongering about a “wider war.” In the Middle East, Bahrain and Kuwait reportedly hit targets in Iran, joining Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the U.S.-led coalition. For the first time, the Saudis and the U.S. together attacked Iraqi Shiite militias . On July 20, Yemen’s Houthis declared a blockade against Saudi commerce in the Red Sea, leading Riyadh to announce an international coalition to keep it open. With the Red Sea’s southern exit threatened, a July 29 drone attack on Damietta, an Egyptian port, endangered the Suez Canal’s northern terminus. Just da...